How did this happen? It is tempting to believe that the meat industry had a hand in this inaccurate media coverage. The plant-based meat industry is certainly no stranger to this type of attack from the meat industry – they have been spending millions of dollars to sponsor attack ads against plant-based meat on the grounds that it is too processed for at least half a decade. Writing misleading press releases, or even sponsoring misleading studies, is certainly not beyond their lobbyists’ remit.

The coverage appears to be coordinated, and even more alarmingly, some such coverage is written in a specific way that suggests it has been consciously constructed to mislead the reader. Several such articles have the structure:

1. Plant-based meats are a type of ultra-processed food (true)
2. Ultra-processed foods tend to be associated with worse health outcomes (true)

A reader can read these true statements, and come away with the incorrect conclusion:

1. Therefore, plant-based meats are associated with worse health outcomes (NOT TRUE)

That said, we might be reminded to apply Hanlon’s razor – do not attribute to malice what can be accounted for by stupidity. 

As Mantzioris points out in her Conversation piece, the press release for the study from Imperial College London used photos of processed meat alternatives. It did not mention meat alternatives in the text – only in the photographs.

It is quite common that journalists will only read press releases, and not read the full study. Could it really be that journalists — including Reda Wigle at the New York Post, as well as Rebecca Whittaker and Kate Pickles of the Daily Mail — didn’t read the study, and didn’t even read the press release? Did these individuals really just look at the pictures?

Perhaps it is sufficient to say that:

1. These individuals are journalists for the Daily Mail and the New York Post
2. Journalists for the Daily Mail and the New York Post tend not to be strong critical thinkers 

It has not gone unnoticed that the most right-wing of the outlets covering this study are the ones that got it the most wrong in focusing on ‘vegan fake meat’. The readership of the Daily Mail and the New York Post want to think that ‘vegan fake meat’ is unhealthy, and the journalists and editorial team there knows it.

This may also be an example of confirmation bias – they had an existing bias against plant-based meat, then saw a press release with a picture that appeared to confirm their bias, and that was enough to be confident enough to run a headline which was just incorrect.

We might very well ask why the press office at Imperial – the recent recipient of $30 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for a Sustainable Protein Centre – chose to use a photo of plant-based meat, when these represented just 0.2% of the foods in the study. That would be a fair question.

It is likely that the individual who chose this image – who may or may not have been one of the researchers – have themselves been subject to the same deliberate attempt to associate ‘ultra-processed foods’ with ‘plant-based meats’ that we all have witnessed for years now. 

A survey by the British Nutrition Foundation found that vegetarian meat alternatives were the second-most-cited example of ultra-processed foods behind ready meals. Again, this is the deliberate result of years of meat industry lobbying on this point.

So, was this disastrous coverage the result of nefarious meat industry lobbying, or just lazy journalism? The reality is probably a bit of both.

It is embarrassing for the Daily Mail and the New York Post to have run demonstrably false headlines, and it is puzzling for the press office at Imperial to have chosen a photo which did not represent the contents of the study. 

But both of these decisions are likely the result of years of the meat industry banging this drum, and repeating plant-based meat = processed = unhealthy. The reality is just the opposite.

According to the findings of a new review, replacing meat with plant-based meat alternatives is likely, in fact, to reduce the risk of heart disease – not increase it. That is because plant-based meat alternatives, compared to meat from animals, are typically lower in saturated fat and higher in fibre. 

In fact, the review found that replacing meat from animals with plant-based meat lowered several cardiovascular disease risk markers, including total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, apolipoprotein B-100, and body weight – concluding that replacing meat with plant-based meat may in fact be cardioprotective.

The reporting on this study – particularly that of the Daily Mail and the New York Post – was so egregiously incorrect that it is likely to have increased heart disease.

Here are some facts:

1. The Daily Mail and New York Post headlines claimed that plant based meat increases risk of heart disease
2. The study cited did not show that plant based meat increased the risk of heart disease
3. In fact, replacing meat with plant-based meat is likely to decrease the risk of heart disease
4. The Daily Mail and New York Post headlines are likely to decrease the rate at which people replace meat from animals with plant-based meat
5. Therefore, the Daily Mail and New York Post headlines are likely to increase the rate of heart disease

The misreporting on this topic might well be the result of laziness rather than malice – though, as I have argued, this laziness was enabled by years of meat industry misinformation. Whatever the case may be, the misreporting of this study is likely to have increased the number of heart deaths. 

Journalists covering health topics have a responsibility to the public to ensure their reporting is accurate. In this case, the journalists failed to meet that responsibility, and as a result, it is likely that the number of heart disease cases will increase.